


Welcome to YA Falls

by Norickayer



Series: Postcards from Elsewhere: A Collection of Young Avengers one-shots [8]
Category: Gravity Falls, Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Human, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Multi, the tropes of norickayer, when will this spree end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Norickayer/pseuds/Norickayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>12 year old twins Billy and Tommy Maximoff are sent to the Skylands of New Jersey to spend the summer at their Uncle Pietro’s Mystery Shack. Two weeks into the summer, Tommy goes missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am terrible but I make no apologies for this.

“Snipe hunting?” Billy repeated, sounding out the word as if the pronunciation could reveal something about its meaning.

“Yeah! It’s a great night for it; not too hot, and a full moon to help us search.” Eli paused. “I mean, unless you kids are scared.”

Kate elbowed him.

“You don’t really have to come if you don’t want to,” Cassie offered, which somehow made things worse.

“Sounds fun. We’ll be there,” Tommy said quickly.

“If it’s not past your bedtime,” Eli sniggered in the background.

“We’ll be there,” Tommy repeated.

“Tommy-“ Billy began.

“Come on Billy, gotta tell Uncle Pietro not to wait up tonight.” Tommy smiled at the older teens. If his grin got a bit sharper when he and Eli met eyes, no one said a word.

Billy sighed and let his brother drag him away.

“Why are you always like this?” Kate demanded once the pre-teens were out of range. “What’s your problem with Tommy?”

Eli shrugged, looking hassled. “He’s a creep. You’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

Kate scoffed. “Eli, he’s twelve. Give him a break.”

-

“Snipe, snipe, snipe,” Tommy repeated to himself, flipping through the handwritten book. It was in pretty good shape for something that had apparently sat inside a tree trunk for thirty years. Still, the hand-bound spine was showing wear, and a few pages came loose under Tommy’s fingers.

He thought he’d seen the word in the journal somewhere, but there were so many entries, so many ciphers, it was hard to remember it all.

Tommy guessed that was the reason the anonymous author wrote it in the first place.

“Tommy, it’s almost midnight,” Billy reminded him, lounging on his bed across the small attic room. “You were the one so set on going.”

“Don’t act like you wouldn’t be pissing yourself with excitement if Teddy was joining us.”

Billy blushed and clenched his fists in the secondhand quilt. “Shut up,” he retorted.

“Great comeback bro,” Tommy laughed. He shut the book. It was no use. He’d have to rely on whatever information Kate had about the creatures.

“At least my crush is on someone our own age,” Billy muttered.

Tommy flinched. To disguise the motion, he whirled around and punched Billy’s shoulder.

“Ow! Hey!”

“I don’t make fun of your-“ Tommy hissed. He finished the sentence by making a wide gesture in Billy’s direction.

His twin raised an eyebrow. “My _what_?”

Tommy paused. His eyes darted to his brother’s stormy expression. Billy was usually the less grounded twin, his head always in the clouds (when it wasn’t in a comic book or a computer game). When Billy got serious, it was cause for concern.

“Um,” Tommy said.

“My _what_?” Billy demanded. “If you have a problem with me, you can- you can-“

“Let’s just go,” Tommy said quietly. “We’re going to be late.”

“Go then, I’m not stopping you,” Billy told him. He crossed his arms and sat down on his bed.

“What? You’re not coming?”

“You want to impress Kate. I’m sure you can handle that without your embarrassing brother around,” Billy said coldly.

Tommy stood there for a moment, waiting for Billy’s expression to clear, waiting for his twin to change his mind and be Tommy’s backup, like he’d been all their lives.

He didn’t.

-

“Hey, where’s the other one?” Eli asked when Tommy showed up alone.

“Home,” Tommy said shortly. “We going or what?”

Kate glanced between her friends, uncertain. “Uh, yeah. It’s right through here.”

So Kate and Eli led the others into the woods. Kate’s flashlight illuminated the deer path, but deep shadows hid roots and rocks, making the footing uncertain. Landmarks that might have been familiar in the daylight morphed into creeping hands and ominous shadows.

It was a good thing Kate was leading the way, because Tommy was well and truly lost.

“Snipes are little carnivorous creatures that live around here,” Kate told them. “The thick layer of rotting leaves on the ground is perfect for them.”

“They’re small, but nasty,” Eli continued. “A swarm of them can clean a body of flesh in thirty seconds flat. But hey, don’t worry. They’re small. Their mouths are too small to do much damage to a living human.” He paused, thoughtful. “Except maybe Tommy.” He laughed.

Tommy seethed.

Kate ignored both of them.

“Spread out, guys,” she ordered. “You all have your nets, right?”

Cassie, Jonas, and Tommy all brandished the butterfly nets that Eli provided at the start of their journey.

“Okay,” Kate announced. “Let’s go then. Snipe hunting!”

They scattered. Cassie dragged Jonas out to the East under the excuse that they ‘needed to share a flashlight.’ Tommy thought it was more likely that they needed to make out.

That didn’t matter. Tommy would find the biggest, scariest Snipe, and Kate would be impressed with him and she’d realize that he wasn’t just a dumb kid and-

And-

What did a snipe look like, anyway?

Tommy crouched lower to the ground, but the blue light on his keychain just made everything look strange. He squinted, trying to make out the tracks Eli had described.

Could that be-? No, just a shadow. Maybe- no, a leaf.

Something moved in the darkness.

Cold adrenaline hit Tommy’s veins. His thoughts raced. He froze in place and waited.

There it was again!

He crept closer, staying low to the ground. If he could just get within reach of the net-

The thing darted away, leaving displaced leaves and a scuttling sound in its wake.

Tommy gave chase.

He stumbled over bumps and thick tree roots, and soon the creature was outside the reach of his light-up keychain. He followed the noises anyway.

His pant leg caught on a thorny bush, and Tommy wasted several precious seconds getting loose.

When he finally got himself free, the noises had stopped.

He looked all around, squinting this way and that for any sign of the creature.

Leaves rustled, branches creaked, and crickets chirped, but there was no sign of the snipe.

Tommy turned to leave. His eyes were focused on a path through the trees, and he took no notice of the ring of mushrooms as he approached it.

-

Kate and Eli stifled their laughter.

“Okay, it’s getting late,” Kate admitted. “We should probably clue them in.”

“I don’t know, they seem to be having fun,” Eli disagreed.

“Yeah, but if Cassie and Jonas have much more fun, we’ll be in bigger trouble,” Kate said with a teasing grin.

Eli grimaced. “No. Why would you say that. They’re fourteen.”

“So were you last year,” Kate pointed out.

“Yeah, which is how I know that fourteen year olds should not be making it to second base,” Eli told her.

“Fair point.” Kate cupped her hands to her mouth and called out into the night. “JONAS! CASSIE! TOMMY!”

The two teens paused, waiting for a response.

“kate?” an echo replied, the volume brought to a whisper by the thick vegetation between them.

“IT’S TIME TO GO HOME!” Eli called back.

Before long, Jonas and Cassie emerged from the woods. Eli squinted at their clothing, but it was impossible to tell if the creases and dirt were from Snipe Hunting or anything else.

“Where’s Tommy?” Kate asked.

Cassie shrugged. “He went the other way, I think.”

She led them off the path to the North.

“TOMMY!” Kate yelled. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

There was no response.

“TOMMY!” Cassie called.

They combed the area. There was no sign of his little blue light, his lightning-bolt baseball cap, or his green t-shirt.

They began to get worried.

“Do you have his phone number?” Eli asked Kate.

“Did he even bring his cellphone?” Cassie wondered.

“What kind of kid leaves his cellphone at him?” Jonas reassured her.

Kate called.

The teens unconsciously held their breath as the phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times.

Tommy didn’t pick up.

Kate and Eli locked eyes.

“We’re in trouble.”

-

The first six hours of the search were desperate. Pietro was roused from sleep by a nervous phone call from Kate. He threw on his work boots and a coat, shook Billy awake, and went into the woods with only his cellphone and a Maglite.

Billy called Noh-Varr after the first hour. He appeared at the edge of the woods in his usual Mystery Shack employee t-shirt, looking fully awake and alert.

The following six hours were tedious. Pietro caved and called the police, but seemed sure they would be no help. As dawn reached the New Jersey Skylands, it seemed like half the town was combing the woods for a lost child.

The residents of YA Falls were inconsistent at the best of times, so Billy found their well-coordinated search odd.

They were too casual about his missing brother, too well-practiced for comfort.

As noon approached, Pietro gathered Tommy’s friends up and sent them back to town.

“Go home. Get some sleep. Or lunch, whatever,” he said in his gruff way. “Let the adults do the hard work.”

“He’s _Tommy_ ,” Billy pleaded. He couldn’t leave, continue on with life while his twin was missing. What was one without the other? What was Billy without Tommy by his side?

“And he’ll still be Tommy once you’ve got some rest,” Pietro continued. “Home. Now.”

-

The sun set on YA Falls with no clues as to Tommy’s whereabouts.

Billy searched under Tommy’s bed for the journal, hoping it might contain some secret, some hint to how a child could disappear in the woods.

Like it’s owner and the original Author before him, the journal was nowhere to be found.

-

Tommy crossed the ring of mushrooms without noticing. He took three steps, and emerged on the other side.

“Kate? Guys?” Tommy called. There was no sign of the others, but then again Tommy wasn’t sure he had followed the right deer trail anyway. He had a compass on his keyring, though, and he walked West until the treeline finally broke, leaving Tommy at the edge of town half a mile from where he started.

He waited around for a few minutes, hoping the older kids would make an appearance. When they refused to show, Tommy gave up and began the walk back to his Uncle’s Mystery Shack.

There were cars parked at the edge of the forest. A few adults milled around, drinking water bottles from a cooler in the back of Mr. Barton’s pick-up truck.

“What’s going on?” Tommy asked.

Everyone froze. Someone shone a flashlight at Tommy. He covered his eyes with one hand and squinted against the brightness.

“…Thomas?” one man asked. Tommy squinted. It was Steve, the scrawny guy who sold charcoal sketches at the farmer’s market. Last week Tommy gave him five bucks on a figure sketch of Kate leaning out of a car window.

“Yeah?” Tommy replied.

“Oh my _god_.”

-

“I swear, I wasn’t in there for more than like, an hour! Two, tops!” Tommy told his uncle several hours later. “This is-“ he didn’t want to say _impossible_. This was YA Falls, after all. Very little was impossible here.

“Calm down kid,” Pietro said tiredly. His eyes were bloodshot, the bags under them even more pronounced and heavy than usual. “I believe you.”

“You…do?” Tommy asked. No one else had. Tommy’s curiosity and bad attitude were well-known in town already, although the twins had only arrived two weeks prior. If anyone would have believed him, Tommy would have bet on Billy, the only person who consistently had his back. Not the estranged uncle who seemed uncomfortable in his presence, whom he was sure didn’t even want them around.

“You ain’t the first kid to go missing in those woods,” Pietro said quietly. “Not the only one to turn up again, either.”

Tommy stared at his uncle. The words seemed heavy, weighed down with more meaning than Tommy could entangle. His hands itched for his journal. There was a code here, some cipher…

“What…?” Tommy asked.

“Hasn’t anyone mentioned the hair yet?” asked Uncle Pietro.

Tommy stared at him. Then, hesitantly, he reached up and took ahold of his dirty, sweat-dampened bangs.

He and Billy were completely identical. From the moment they were born, strangers and family members would confuse one twin for the other.

But now, the lock of hair in Tommy’s hand said differently.

It was white

…just like his Uncle Pietro’s.


	2. David Alleyne, Psychic Prodigy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where the Mystery Twins do not appear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place before chapter 2 chronologically. Whoops. Pretend you're watching this on TV and caught a re-run.

“But I feel as though I have some doubters in the audience,” Psychic Prodigy David said calmly, looking out at the sea of people clustered together under the canary-yellow tent. “I don’t blame you,” he continued. “It seems unbelievable, right?”

“This is stupid,” whispered Nico Minoru in the third row.

David scanned his eyes across the crowd and stopped. Right. At. Her.

“You look like a skeptic,” he said pleasantly. “Would you mind taking the stage?”

Nico froze, and began to shake her head. She didn’t want the attention, the stares. She didn’t want to be a part of a spectacle like this.

“Go,” her friend Karolina urged. “Everyone’s waiting! Go!”

And so she went.

“And your name is?” the boy asked. Up on stage he seemed smaller, more harmless. What was Nico afraid of? He was a head shorter than her.

Just a kid, really.

He held out a deck of card to her, and she hesitated before picking one off of the top.

Still, Nico was reluctant to join the act.

“You seem like a very private person,” David said after a pause. Nico fought the urge to roll her eyes. Yeah, refusing to introduce herself was a pretty big hint. “How about a nickname then?” David continued.

Yeah, she could do that.

“Sister Grimm,” Nico said, the first thing that came to mind. Sure that screenname was a few months old now, but that just meant none of the audience would be able to find her online, either.

She handed the card back to David, and he began shuffling it back into the deck.

“Sister Grimm,” David agreed. “You think this is all tricks, lucky guesses, and special effects, right?” he looked out into the audience, and they obliged with yells and ‘boo’s and general revelry.

“Well, yeah,” Nico said. Of course it was. Everyone knew that.

“There’s a lot of negative energy around you,” David said thoughtfully, studying Nico’s face as if he really could see some kind of magic aura. Nico couldn’t stop a smirk from dawning on her face at that.

Negative energy. Heh, yeah.

The kid started doing fancy moves with the card deck, making a bridge, throwing cards into the air at regular intervals.

“You don’t seem surprised,” David continued. “It shouldn’t be news to you, after all, that’s the reason you came to YA Falls for the summer, isn’t it?”

Nico’s smirk froze on her face. That was… a lucky guess. Or someone must have told him. Right? It was no secret Nico’s parents dumped her here with the other kids, right?

“You’re right, they don’t have your best interests at heart,” David told her. He stared into her eyes with an uncomfortable intensity. His words were vague, but in the way of two friends rehashing a conversation in public, not a charlatan grasping for loose strings. “Just remember that you aren’t in this alone. Trust your instincts. Keep your friends close.”

For a minute, Nico almost thought he _knew_ , about the Pride and the ritual and the powers. Then, her common sense reasserted itself. This was all guesswork, horoscope nonsense.

“Just remember, _Pride Goeth Before the Fall_ ,” David quoted.

Her blood ran cold.

“Is this your card?” he asked.

It was.

-

David threw off his stage cape as soon as he cleared the front door and sprinted for the living room. His mother sat at her desk there, an old oak monstrosity that had expanded over the years to cover the entire back wall.

She glanced up over her reading glasses when he walked in, but immediately looked back to her work. David waited with barely-contained impatience for her to finish going over the document in her hands.

“Yes?” she asked when she finally met his eyes.

“Is it enough?” he asked, “Are they coming? Are they shutting down the Mystery Shack?”

Mrs. Alleyne smiled sadly. “Not this time, David. ‘The Federal Government requires more proof than hearsay and a child’s hunch. Try again next time,’” She quoted.

David fumed. “Oh come on!” he raged, “That should have been at least enough to get them to arrest him for tax evasion! It’s like they’re avoiding coming to town at …all… costs.” David paused.

What if they were? What if they knew all about the strange occurrences in the area and were avoiding it on purpose! What if Pietro Maximoff knew that and was using it to his advantage?

“You’ll find what you’re looking for one day, David,” his mother assured him. “Now go do your homework, I still have some budgets to write up.”

David walked to his room, deep in thought. Plan A was a bust, if there was no way to convince the federal agents to shut down the Mystery Shack on legal grounds. And if the legitimate channels wouldn’t stop Pietro the Giant Fraud, then David would just have to try some illegitimate channels.

-

David felt that the spell to summon Loki Cipher from the Spaces-Between should have been more complex, but at least it was suitably flashy. The lightning was a nice touch, he felt.

“Hey Glasses,” the demon greeted. “You ready to make a deal?”

The Journal devoted two whole pages to the entity known as Loki Cipher, and David had read every word three times over before daring to summon zir. He ran the advice over in his head before he spoke.

Specific phrasing. Don’t trust Cipher. Only as a last resort.

If David had a flaw, it was that too many people had told him he was smart for too long. He was beginning to believe his own hype.

“You have power over minds, right?” David asked.

“Could be,” Loki Cipher answered with fake humility. “I have many powers.”

“I need you to enter Pietro Maximoff’s mind and find me something. Can you do that?”

“Sure, what do you need?” the demon asked.

“Something secret. Proof of his crimes or something to blackmail him with,” David answered.

“And what’s in it for me?” Loki asked pleasantly.

“No contact with my family or friends,” David warned.

“Fine, fine,” Loki allowed. “How about… you know, it can get pretty dull here outside the physical world. How about… you give me access to your bookshelf?” Loki eyed the tall shelf behind David.

David didn’t take his eyes off Loki, but quickly thought through what books he kept on the shelf.

Some occult volumes, his school books, a few novels. And, usually, the Journal.

“One afternoon with the bookshelf for Pietro Maximoff’s secrets,” David offered. “And remember, I don’t care what kind of toothpaste he uses, I need something big.”

“Got it, got it,” Loki said carelessly. “Do we have a deal?”

Cautiously, David held out his hand. “We do.”

And if he carefully placed the Journal into a hidden drawer after Loki left, well. David was a man (boy) of his word, but he wasn’t _stupid_.

-

Loki Cipher didn’t return that night, or the next. David wasn’t sure what that meant- had ze renegaded on their deal? Was Loki capable of that?

When the Maximoff family continued to stroll around town as if nothing happened, David assumed they’d somehow managed to foil his plans, as usual, and tried to put the incident behind him

But he still kept the Journal off the shelf. Just in case.


	3. The price of knowledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy's quest to find the Author of the journal is really cutting into Billy's romantic life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: self-harm, disassociation, and Loki being a giant creep. Pretty much all the content from Gravity Falls episode _Sock Opera_.
> 
> Don't expect this to be my usual Loki characterization.  
> This Loki is Very Different.

“Wait, you’re telling me that Old Man Stark founded the Society of the Blind Eye?” Tommy demanded. “But he’s a nutjob! All he does is run around without pants on and make up words and creep around the junkyard and build giant robots.”

Okay, maybe there was some precedent for this.

“I know Tommy, but look at the videos! You think Tony Stark is lucid enough to fake something like this?” Billy argued, gesturing to the black-and-white monitor that was still cycling through video clips. The audio was tinny and it was clearly recorded on an old camcorder, but there is was in undeniable terms: Tony Stark aging before their eyes, describing his quest to forget while unwittingly illustrating his descent into madness.

“Turn it off,” Tommy said after several minutes. “I can’t watch this. Turn it off.”

Billy agreed.

-

“So if Old Man Stark isn’t the author of the journal, who is?” Tommy demanded, throwing his hands up.

Billy shrugged. “Does it even matter? They’re long gone, whoever it was. You just found out that the whole town has been memory-wiped and your biggest concern is some guy who disappeared a decade ago?”

Tommy fought the urge to groan. For a comic book nerd, Billy could be remarkably unimaginative at times.

“Whoever wrote this book knew about the society! Stark created the memory gun to forget the things he learned working with the author! This is just more proof that we need to find him!”

“Stark wanted to forget for a reason. Maybe we’re better off not knowing,” Billy said softly.

Tommy pretended not to hear.

-

“Oh my god what did you do to our room,” Tommy demanded. From his place in the doorway it looked like a disaster, with newspaper, paint, and bits of clay everywhere.

His twin looked up sheepishly. With great care, he put the action figure down so that no wet paint touched the dropcloth.

“Well remember that guy from the library-?”

Tommy scrunched up his eyebrows. The library was two days ago. He’d paged through some old cryptography books, looking for familiar symbols. Billy was been near the comics-

Oh right. That boy.

“The guy with the dolls?” Tommy asked.

“Action figures,” Billy corrected. “Custom Justice League action figures.”

“Right,” Tommy said. “And now you’re frantically trying to make your own to impress him.”

“No,” Billy lied.

“I’ll be downstairs.”

-

“Billy, you said you were going to help me unlock the secrets of the laptop!” Tommy stomped his foot down in emphasis.

“I know, but,” Billy said. “The Superhero day at the bookstore is tomorrow and there isn’t going to be another one until _fall_ , and we’re only here for two more months, and-“

“Bill, don’t you think unlocking the secrets of the town are a little more important than impressing this random guy?” Tommy asked, his voice cracking.

“You don’t- you don’t get it!” Billy hissed. “He actually likes me! And who knows if that’ll ever happen again before high school. Teddy’s the first guy I’ve ever met who likes superheroes and comics _and_ boys.”

“You said you’d help,” Tommy repeated.

“And I will help,” Billy agreed. “ _After_ the expo.”

-

“Polydactly,” Tommy typed into the ancient laptop.

WRONG PASSWORD.

“YA FALLS,” he tried.

WRONG PASSWORD.

“Tony Stark.”

WRONG PASSWORD.

“Cryptography,” “Cryptid,” and “Jersey Devil” were likewise met with a bold red WRONG PASSWORD.

Tommy sighed and slumped back onto his pillow.

How many options could there really be? Surely he’d solve this before the end of the summer. Right?

The machine beeped, and Tommy leaped up, sure that he’d cracked it.

“TOO MANY ATTEMPTS. MEMORY WILL WIPE IN 45..44..43..42…41…”

“NO!” Tommy screamed. “No no no no no!”

This was his first big break since finding the journal in the first place! Who knew what kinds of information this computer held! He couldn’t lose it forever just because of a stupid password!

“Hey, looks like you could use some help.” The smooth, smug voice hung in the air for several seconds before its owner appeared.

Loki Cipher was little more than a rip in space, a floating abstract shape that pointed like a V, but gently curved like bull horns.

“Did you miss me?” the demon asked with glee.

“You,” Tommy spat.

“You totally did,” Loki Cipher laughed. “You did!”

“What do _you_ want,” Tommy demanded. “Looking to get your ass kicked again?”

Loki made a buzzing noise that approximated a human hum. “I remember it differently. Buy hey! No hard feelings! I see you’ve got a problem here. Need some help?”

Tommy’s eyes darted to the screen. The countdown reached 20…19…18.

“No,” Tommy lied.

“Hey, whatever,” Loki agreed. “I’ll just go then.” With a _blink_ , ze disappeared, leaving Tommy alone.

15…14… the countdown reached 13 before Tommy broke.

“Wait!” he called. “What do you want!”

Loki popped back into existence. “Oh, not much,” ze said causally. Ze floated around the attic room, appearing to examine the action figures Billy left drying on the floor. “I’m really liking these dolls.”

“They’re my brother’s,” Tommy said with trepidation.

Loki scoffed. “ _They’re my brothers_ ,” ze mocked. “Geeze, if Shooting Star thought about you half as much as you think of him-“

Tommy scowled. That wasn’t- Loki was taking things out of context!

Right?

Loki seemed to take Tommy’s silence as a refusal.

 

“Okay, well if you don’t want to unlock the secrets of YA Falls…”

7…6…

“OKAY OKAY!” Tommy cried. “Just one doll?”

“One doll for my help,” Loki repeated. Ze didn’t have a mouth, but zir voice suggested a razor-sharp grin.

3…2…

“Deal!” Tommy agreed, thrusting his hand into Loki Cipher’s.

It tingled.

“Now which doll-“ Tommy started to ask.

“ _This one_ ,” Loki purred.

Everything stopped.

There was a _twist_ , and a _pull_ , and suddenly Tommy was in a closet. Or was he on a mountain? Or was he floating in space?

There was a thin-ness to his surroundings, like the air at high elevations, but the room was silent and echoed as if there were walls trapping him. But he was weightless.

He couldn’t feel the ground.

He couldn’t feel anything, actually.

Did he have eyes? Did he have ears? How could he tell?

‘ _It was Loki_ ,’ Tommy remembered. _‘Loki lives in dreams. If this was a dream, I could_ -‘

Tommy imagined he had eyes. He opened them.

He was in the attic room. There was his bed. There was the window with the dying sunlight streaming in, casting the walls in orange and pink. There were the action figures his brother spent the last 24 hours tirelessly sculpting and painting.

There was the laptop.

There was- Billy? The figure on the bed looked directly at him and grinned. Billy didn’t smile like that, but who else could it-

Billy didn’t have white hair.

“ _Loki_?” Tommy cried. Then he imagined he had a mouth, and tried again. “LOKI!”

The demon in his body laughed, a high cackle. “Ooh, having a body is weird. All these muscles and fluids and viscera,” ze said with Tommy’s voice.

“Get out of there!” Tommy demanded.

“No take backs,” Loki teased. Ze slid off the bed and onto the floor, crashing down in a painful-looking slump. Ze laughed again. “Bones.”

-

The strangest part of being incorporeal was the lack of an endocrine system. He should be freaking out right now. He should be hyperventilating, probably. Instead, he hovered above his body, watching.

Loki raked a fork across the tender flesh of his forearm again. Angry red lines appeared on the skin where the top layer of skin was torn.

Loki stared at it in fascination. Ze didn’t react to the pain, and of course Tommy didn’t feel it.

Tommy doesn’t feel much of anything. This was bad, right? Tommy needed his body back, and it needed to be in good condition because… because…

Why, again?

Loki laughed. “Pain is so _weird_ ,” ze observed.

Ah yes, right. Because it would hurt _so much_ when Tommy gets back in there.

“Get out get out get out,” Tommy chanted at the demon, who seemed indifferent to his presence.

Loki stabbed the fork again.

This time, the arm bled.

Tommy imagined himself some arms for the sole purpose of grabbing his head in panic.

“Stop that! That’s my body!”

Loki Cipher looked up. He held Tommy’s eyes open too widely, as if he needed more light than usual to see. His pupils were tiny pinpricks.

“Hey, you’re right,” Loki realized. “I’m gunna miss the show.”

If Tommy had a stomach, it would be sinking about now.

-

“-for the competition. I don’t think I’ll win, I mean I’ve literally only been making figurines for two days, but it’ll be cool to see the other kids’ work and Teddy’s figurines are so cool you have to see-“ Billy babbled at high speed. Pietro found he couldn’t keep his attention focused, and let his eyes wander across the back room of the local book shop. Twelve folding tables were set up along the perimeter, and YA Falls’ geek population milled around the room with mixed enthusiasm. There was Steve the asthmatic artist with his table of charcoal sketches. There was Peter, the pimpled teenager with his “vintage” camera hanging around his neck. There was Nate Richards, the teenage son of the Richards family, who were a bunch of assholes, in Pietro’s opinion. And he knew assholes.

A gaggle of kids clustered around the figurine booth where all the contestants had propped up their work. There was blond boy who must be Teddy, standing a full head taller than the other kids. Behind him, almost shielded from view completely was the little Pakistani girl Pietro saw in town sometimes. Her older brother always glared at Pietro when he walked by. There was the Yorkes girl with her purple hair and the Stein boy behind her, looking sullen and out of place.

Boy, Pietro didn’t miss being a teenager.

And there was-

“Hello Maximoffs,” greeted a high, smarmy voice.

Pietro whirled around.

“You,” he growled.

The boy was barely a year younger than his nephews, but what he lacked in age he made up for in presumption.  That canary suit was murder on the eyes, and what was with the bolo tie? Did he think he was in Texas?

Billy glanced between his uncle and the kid and backed away, unwilling to get between them.

The young psychic smiled insincerely.

“Nice to see you out of that Hack Shack, Pietro,” he said. “Thinking of going into collectibles?”

“Nice to see you out of your tent, David,” Pietro shot back, “Thinking of going to kindergarten?”

Nailed it.

David’s smile never faltered. “I’m here to support a friend, Pietro.” He paused and looked chagrined. “A friend is a person you enjoy spending time with, without an ulterior motive,” he explained.

Pietro seethed. How much could one reasonably hate a child? “I’ve never known you to be sincere in your life, David,” he told him.

“What you don’t know could fill a book,” David replied. “Or several.” His fake-polite smile morphed into his stage smile, the ‘I know something you don’t’ smile he used in his “David Alleyne, Psychic Prodigy” act.

Billy returned from the display table with the tall blond boy in tow.

Pietro turned his full attention to his nephew, dismissing David’s existence as unimportant.

“Hey kid, who’s your friend?” he asked.

“Uncle Pietro, this is-“ Billy began.

“Teddy!” David interrupted, looking pleased with himself.

“Hey David,” Teddy said, sounding bewildered. “You like figurines too?”

“I’m checking it out,” David said casually. “It seems interesting.”

“Well… cool,” the blond replied, uncertain. “Uh. Hope you enjoy yourself.”

David smiled. “Me too.”

Pietro shivered. “Okay this is getting weird. I’m out,” he announced. “I’ll be out in the shop if you need me. Looking at everything but this.”

Billy gave him a horrified look, but Pietro just shrugged. His nephew would be fine. A little embarrassment wouldn’t hurt Billy as much as witnessing pre-pubescent flirting might hurt Pietro.

“Hey, isn’t that your brother?” Pietro asked to divert attention from his departure. As Billy turned to look, Pietro sprinted for the door.

As it turns out, it _was_ Billy’s brother.

“Tommy!” Billy called, desperate not to be alone with his crush and the sworn enemy of the Mystery Shack.

Tommy turned. His eyes were wide, as if surprised. His mouth stretched into a grin.

“How’s it goin’, Shooting star,” Tommy drawled.

Billy stared.

“Tommy, are you bleeding?” he asked.

His brother glanced down at his arm, unconcerned.

“Yup,” he said happily.

Billy felt cold. “We’re going upstairs,” he told Teddy. Then he grabbed his brother’s uninjured arm and dragged him to the stairway.

The metal fire escape led to the flat roof of the store, which was occasionally used as a venue for neighborhood parties and barbeques. Tonight, there were cheap paper lanterns hung around the shallow walls to illuminate even more attractions: A signed copy of _Smallville_ season 1, the model spaceship that won the middle school science fair back in February, a genuine meteorite Old Man Stark had dredged out of the lake last month.

By this time, most of the tables on the roof were empty, their hosts having long since packed up and gone home. When two preteen boys stomped up looking angry and hurt, the few stragglers took the hint and made themselves scarce.

“So you took the Journal,” Tommy announced, “What’d you do with it?”

“Tommy, what the hell are you doing?” Billy demanded.

“Journal. Location. Tell me,” Tommy reiterated.

“Is it monsters? What?” Billy asked. Was there some threat Tommy needed to research?

Tommy paused and stared at Billy. He didn’t blink.

It was uncomfortable.

“Hey, did you know I can do this?” Tommy said, and demonstrated by pushing his thumb so far back it touched his wrist.

Billy flinched. “How are you- _why_ -“

Tommy laughed. It was not a good laugh.

His wide eyes met Billy’s, and for a moment they looked green rather than their natural brown.

Having dealt with YA Falls’ weirdness for over a month now, that was all the hint Billy needed.

“Who are you and where’s Tommy?”

The thing that looked like Tommy stepped into Billy’s personal space.

Billy stepped back.

“He’s right here,” Tommy’s voice whispered. He stepped forward.

Billy stepped back.

“You’re not him,” Billy reiterated, feeling more confident in that assumption the longer the interaction continued.

“I never said I was,” not-Tommy replied. He stepped forward.

Billy stepped-

The back of his knees hit the low wall at the edge of the roof. Billy threw out his arms and braced himself against the wall to avoid toppling over it.

“Say,” not-Tommy continued, undaunted. “If you went over, would that make you a Falling Star?”

It laughed.

“Loki? Loki Cipher?” Billy wondered.

“Good thing you’re pretty,” not-Tommy said. Inhabiting the body of Billy’s identical twin made that joke oddly self-serving, Billy thought.

“You’re all… not abstract.”

“Nope, 100% physical right now,” ~~Tommy~~ Loki gloated. “Hey, maybe I’ll keep it.”

“You can’t!” Billy protested.

Loki was silent for a moment.

“Hey, maybe I won’t. Maybe you’ll tell me where the journal is.”

Billy grimaced. That journal became Tommy’s life over the last month. Giving that up to something like Loki?

“-Or,” Loki continued, “Maybe I’ll take Thunder bolt’s body for a spin downstairs. Maybe I’ll talk to some _boys_.” Loki somehow managed to purr the word ‘boys’.

“Oh god don’t,” Billy babbled. “Leave Teddy alone this is my one chance.”

“Then we have a deal,” Loki replied, “I leave your mating ritual intact, you hand over the journal.”

“I don’t-“ Billy said. It was just a book. There were two others somewhere, right?

“I mean, it’s not like you owe anything to your dumb brother,” Loki continued blithely.

Billy froze.

“Screw you,” he hissed, and he kneed his identical twin I the crotch.

Not-Tommy fell to the floor, reflexively curling around his abused body.

Billy stepped over him, away from the edge. What to do with a possessed brother?

“…Billy?”

Billy’s head turned so fast he was almost nauseous. There, standing at the stairs, was Teddy.

Billy glanced between Tommy’s body and Teddy. How to get out of this one?

“You’re about to miss the judging,” Teddy said, dazed.

“Uh…” Billy replied.

On the floor, Loki groaned.

“What happened?” Teddy asked.

Billy sighed. “It’s a long story.” He looked around. “Come up here and sit on my brother so he doesn’t get up.”

Teddy stared. “What?”

Billy was just. So tired. “I need him to stay put until I get back,” he explained.

“What are you going to do?” Teddy asked.

“Find a magic book to exorcize my brother,” Billy answered. He was too emotionally drained to care how this reflected on him right now. Teddy would think he was crazy and David would win the stupid contest (right? He’d entered, hadn’t he?) and ride off into the sunset with Teddy, but at least Tommy might come out of this alive, and in his own body.

Teddy looked down at Tommy’s body.

“Okay,” he said.


	4. WendigDON'T

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After David tries to whoo away the object of Billy's affections, Billy's revenge is ill-advised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've switched the order of chapters 2 and 3, but it doesn't affect the story much. Or at all.

The monster tore through David’s Tent of Telepathy as if the heavy canvas was made of tissue paper. It gave a rattling shriek, and the crowd of cheering tourists thought it was a new addition to the show until it reached the back row.

Molly Hayes, sitting with her friend Klara, choked and gagged, the smell of rotting meat filling her nose. Closer to the aisle, Sylvie, age 11, got goosebumps despite the summer heat.

It reached for the girls with skeletal fingers sharpened into points.

Sylvie screeched and fell to the floor, scrambling away on all fours.

The beast took another step, crunching through the cheap plastic seats.

The crowd got the hint.

There were screams, yells, and several camera flashes. The audience rose as one, and became a mass of pushing, shoving, flailing limbs as they all tried to escape at once.

On stage, David stared.

He wasn’t a stranger to the colorful history of YA Falls, of the creatures and artifacts and legends that surrounded the town and its surrounding woods. But David had never seen anything like this.

It was making its way down the center aisle, almost dragging its strange, toe-less feet along.

It was big. Larger than a human, and despite the fact that it stood hunched over itself, it was still taller than David twice over. Its ashen skin stretched tightly over its bones, and the skeletal impression was only enhanced by the dirty deer skull it wore over its head.

What _was_ it, though?

The thing let out another shriek and lunged at an unfortunate tourist who didn’t manage to escape his seat fast enough.

It reached both hands around the guy’s middle, and dragged him closer, up to meet the thing’s mouth.

Bloodless lips cracked open to reveal human-like teeth sharpened to a point, and David decided that the show was over.

He reached up to his bolo tie, where a single greenish stone sat innocuously in a metal fitting.

It didn’t glow or spark. There was no outward sign that it was anything other than a strange fashion choice.

But the creature paused. Slowly, as if pulled by marionette strings, the beast rose into the air.

It snarled in anger, and only gripped its prey tighter. David frowned. That wouldn’t do.

He glanced about for something- there!

With a thought and a gesture, David lifted a 50-lb speaker from the stage and sent it flying at the monster.

The creature didn’t even notice until it hit with a smash and the worst auditory feedback David had ever heard. He doubled over, covering his ears as his sound system protested being used as a weapon.

When the ringing in his ears subsided, David dared to look up.

The monster still hung in the air, one arm limp and bloody, the other clawing at the air.

On the bright side, he’d dropped the tourist.

On the other hand, the thing was big, heavy, and furious, and David’s amulet was already straining to hold it in place.

He’d better think of something, quick.

-

“Oh no,” Billy breathed. “Oh no, oh no, oh _no_!”

He ran toward the Tent of Telepathy, then paused. Okay, so the Wendigo got out of control. What could he do? He started to run back toward the woods. Then he stopped. He couldn’t just leave a group of tourists to be eaten by a cannibalistic winter spirit, right?

What to do, what to do?

“Hey doofus, if you’re looking for your boyfriend, I think he just ran that way, screaming.”

“Tommy,” Billy exclaimed in relief.

Tommy gave him a look. The look said ‘I am highly suspicious as to why you are so happy to see me.’

The look didn’t last long, because Tommy caught sight of something behind his twin. Of a torn tent and screams of terror.

“So I’m guessing David’s show isn’t going well,” Tommy said.

Billy winced.

Tommy’s face brightened considerably. “Oh hey, did you sabotage something? Ruin the act to get one up on the competition? Uncle Pietro will be so proud.”

“Stop it Tommy, I already feel bad enough,” Billy begged.

“Apparently not, if you still stole my Journal,” Tommy shot back with an unkind smile.

“Borrowed!” Billy corrected. “I borrowed your journal, but it’s useless! It told me how to find the Wendigo, but it doesn’t say _anything_ about how to contain it!” Billy took the journal out of his bag and flipped through it to demonstrate.

Tommy leaned in and examined the page thoughtfully.

“Hm. Maybe should have thought of that before you set it on David.”

“I didn’t set it on David!” Billy growled in frustration, “I- oh forget it!”

“Here,” Tommy offered, finally taking pity on his sibling. He took out a penlight from his pocket and held it over the page.

The ultraviolet light cast a purple sheen over the journal, revealing the message written in invisible ink (or, possibly, lemon juice).

‘ _USE FIRE’_ it read in large, bold text.

The twins look at each other.

“Good enough for me.”

-

So lighting the Tent of Telepathy on fire was maybe overkill.

But then again, a little arson was preferable to murder by proxy, which looked like the alternative.

The sun had gone down by the time the tent stopped smoldering. The tourists were long gone, but David had joined the twin’s vigil some time ago. The three kids sat on the damp grass and stared at the ruins of the stage, waiting for the Wendigo’s body to lurch up from the ruins- or not.

So far, it looked like ‘not’.

“I really didn’t mean for it to go after you,” Billy announced.

David looked over at him. “So it was you?”

Billy waved his hand in a vague gesture. “Sort of? I just wanted to make a distraction, prove you weren’t as cool as you thought you were. I actually asked the gnomes for help. They woke up the Wendigo.”

“Wait, don’t the gnomes hate you?” Tommy asked idly, pacing around the clearing.

“Clearly,” David muttered.

“But uh, that was pretty cool, how you held it off so the crowd could escape,” Billy said.

“Your makeshift flamethrower wasn’t too bad either,” David admitted with a smile.

“It was my idea!” Tommy yelled from the several yards away.

David laughed.

“You’re not mad?” Billy asked after a pause.

“Nah,” David answered, “I mean, I don’t have the moral high ground here. I summoned a demon to invade your uncle’s head awhile back.”

“Oh,” Billy said, thoughtfully. “Wait, you did _what_?”

-

Two night later, Loki Cipher made another appearance.

-

“Pietro Maximoff has a secret room under the Mystery Shack,” Loki announced without warning.

David flinched hard, sending the pen scraping across the page, ruining the runes he’d painstakingly copied.

“What,” David demanded.

“Secret room. Under the shack. Very hush-hush,” Loki told him.

David’s brain made a few connections. The deal. The secret.

“I summoned you three weeks ago,” David accused. “What use is that to me _now_?”

Loki seemed unconcerned. “You didn’t give me a time limit, now did you. There’s your secret, now for your side of the bargain.”

“I asked you for something useful!” David yelled, “And you tell me he has a basement.”

“Secret Room,” Loki repeated. “Won’t tell the kids about it. Hidden behind the snack machine. Some kind of weird energy down there.”

David reconsidered. That… might be useful to know. Especially if it could force a wedge between Pietro and the twins.

The twins, thought, weren’t really the problem. It wasn’t _their_ fault their uncle was a fraud.

“Fine,” David decided. He closed the journal with a snap, and placed it back into its drawer. “An afternoon with my bookcase. Help yourself.”

Loki’s eye, which had previously been locked on the Journal, met David’s gaze.

“Don’t mind if I do,” ze replied.

A _twist_ , a _snap_ , a displacement of air, and suddenly David was floating outside his body, looking in.

“What?” David demanded, “This wasn’t the deal!”

“Oh don’t get your panties in a twist,” Loki replied through David’s mouth. “I’m usually incorporeal. Can’t exactly read a book in the dreamscape, can I?” ze asked rhetorically.

David had a bad feeling about this.

But as the hours wore on, Loki just sat at David’s desk, slowly making zir way through David’s books. Zir gaze lingered on the matrices in David’s Advanced Calculus textbook. Loki paged _through A Beginners Guide to Slight of Hand_ with interest. Ze provided a colorful commentary on David’s elementary school yearbook.

And then, when zir time was up, ze gave David a jaunty salute and disappeared, leaving David back in his own body.

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Learn more about [Snipe Hunting](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snipe+hunt) and [fairy circles.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_ring)
> 
> I'll probably add more "episodes" to this as time goes on. If you want spoilers, see [my YA Falls tag on tumblr. ](http://doesntafraid.tumblr.com/tagged/YA+FALLS+AU)


End file.
